1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a conveyor in which a number of rollers, an endless belt or other transfer members are supported between right and left side frames which are fixed in place by a base member and which said conveyor is in particular used for conveying trays into which have been inserted packages which are employed in a textile factory processing line, or other such relatively small objects.
2. Prior Art
In a textile factory, the yarn is processed to form a package and is conveyed between machines. In order to protect the yarn layers of synthetic fiber packages it is not possible to lay the packages on their sides and so that they can be easily grasped by the loading robot, the packages are conveyed when inserted onto a peg shaft. There are round trays with a central peg shaft and square shaped trays in which the shaft extends out sideways. A conveyor is employed for conveying these trays. At largest, the trays are about 30 cm diameter and the weight of the packages is, at maximum, about 15 kg. Further, because there is a relatively large number of bends along the conveyor route, the longest straight sections are at most 6 m or less.
In a conventional general purpose tray conveyor, the right and left side frames are fixed by means of a base member which is provided laterally in an appropriate area with a number of rollers being supported between the two side frames and driven so that they rotate and on top of which run the trays. The side frames of the conventional tray conveyor is employed by an angle plate. In order to support the roller at this angle plate, a number of bolt holes are made and the roller is supported by screwing the bolts into the bolt holes. Further, the angle plate is welded or fixed to base member by some other means. However, because the conventional conveyor uses the angled plate as a side frame, a large number of bolt holes must be made and the number of places for adjustment is increased accordingly. For this reason, the number of man hours required for installation of even a relatively small and short conveyor, does not differ appreciably from that of a conveyor of normal size and so there is a limit to how far the installation costs can be reduced.